Non-oxide precipitates in additively manufactured austenitic stainless steel

Precipitates in an austenitic stainless steel fabricated via any Additive Manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, technique have been widely reported to be only Mn-Si-rich oxides. However, via Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) studies on a 316L stainless steel, we show that non-oxide precipitates (intermetallics, sulfides, phosphides and carbides) can also form when the steel is fabricated via Laser Metal Deposition (LMD)—a directed energy deposition-type AM technique. An investigation into their origin is conducted with support from precipitation kinetics and finite element heat transfer simulations. It reveals that non-oxide precipitates form during solidification/cooling at temperatures ≥ 0.75T_m (melting point) and temperature rates ≤ 10⁵ K/s, which is the upper end of the maximum rates encountered during LMD but lower than those encountered during Selective Laser Melting (SLM)—a powder-bed type AM technique. Consequently, non-oxide precipitates should form during LMD, as reported in this work, but not during SLM, in consistency with existing literature.